From their Brooklyn workshop, thefuturefuture melds burgeoning technologies with a very DIY-informed aesthetic and sensibility. They’ll be joining us for our Nemo-delayed 3D printing jewelry bazaar at Ace Hotel New York this Saturday — and took a few minutes to talk about their work as they prepare.
How does your architectural background influence the way you relate to the human body in jewelry design?
As architects, we typically develop our ideas in terms of constraints. Working in NYC forces us to constantly work within the obstructions of the existing built environment, and we approach the human body in the same way. Our architectural pieces are always very site-specific, however designing a line to fit each individual is not necessarily possible. So our approach is to make pieces that are generated by custom algorithms so that each piece is as unique as the person wearing it.
Do you dream in 3D?
Absolutely. Actually, we dream in 4D because there is time involved! We also daydream of dark matter and parallel universes.
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This
is this:
A biomimetic 3D-printed shoe collaboration between Dutch fashion designer Marieka Ratsma and American architect Kostika Spaho, inspired by the skull of a bird, reflects the lightness and highly-differentiated bone structure of the cranium. The structure requires less support material, resulting in increased efficiency, strength and elegance — one of the many alluring aspects of biomimicry that, when combined with emerging technologies such as 3D mapping and printing, fuses an Old World, Da Vinci-esque principle of worshiping and mimicking the natural world to further human evolution, with an otherworldly animal-machine-human future (or present) straight out of Blade Runner. Kostika will be working with designers tomorrow in the lobby at Ace Hotel New York for our Fashion Week 3D printing jewelry design bazaar — unless Mother Nature biomimics us back on our asses. In which case, enjoy the reading material.
Top photo from Robin Charlotte, bottom photo by Thomas Van Schaik.
op·u·lent adj: 1. characterized by an obvious or lavish display of wealth or affluence 2. in richly abundant supply
The Opulent Project is a Portland-based designer/maker collaborative founded by Meg Drinkwater and Erin Gardner a handful of years ago. Drinkwater and Gardner make “jewelry about jewelry” — and they’re of particular interest to us in this moment not only because their work is stunning, inspiring all sort of covetous, curious thoughts — but also because their 3D Ring has us thinking about the metaphor of 3D printing in the era of DIY, “makers” and the conflation of art and fashion. Culled from Google Image Commons, the ring is a stack of digital images never intended to see the light of day IRL. Having broken this unspoken contract, they’ve made something beautiful, thoughtful and slightly dangerous.
“We like to make objects. We are curious about the relationship our society has to its objects. We ponder infatuations. We are interested the nature of possessions. With that, we become a factory.”
The term ekphrasis refers to the act of “making art about art” — it comes to mind when you mention making “jewelry about jewelry” in that both practices invoke translation, cynicism, celebration and a sort of intentional nonsense-making, calling into question the social, aesthetic and material scaffolding around “real,” “fake” and “meaningful.” How cerebral do you get in your process — does it touch on these points or is more about play? Or both?
This is a great question and I think it considers our process and approach very well. Our process is absolutely rooted in a cerebral investigation of a subject matter, however the outcome, or the product, is very much about play. We try not to take ourselves too seriously. But the viewer/wearer response can be varied in relation to this question. We recently had a bit of a debate with our gallerist in New Jersey about this exact subject. She was wondering if people were ever insulted by some of our projects. Where I had thought we were blending all of the above: translation, cynicism, celebration and intentional nonsense making, she seemed to think some of our work could be more on the cynical side. She thought some of our projects could be seen as a bit more of a sarcastic representation of jewelry than a celebratory one, as though we were saying, “Oh you want a fancy ring; I’ll give you a fancy ring.” We can be pretty cynical and we are of course critical of the established system of value related to commercial jewelry and luxury objects, but we regard this culture with fascination, not necessarily disgust. Our work is not angry, but curious… We are asking questions, not making statements.
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We kick off our Fall Fashion Week interviews with designer and sorcerer Chris Habana. Raised in the Philippines and the US on a steady diet of sci-fi, fantasy role play, Dungeons and Dragons and 90s gay counter-culture, Chris’ work blends gothic iconography with a playful and aggressive take on a pop lens. Amidst sketching up his collaboration with thefuturefuture on a series of pieces for our in-house 3D-printed jewelry bazaar at Ace Hotel New York this weekend, Chris talked to us briefly about Catholic School, his queer icons and being an early adopter of 3D mapping in the fashion world.
Talk about how your binational, big gay life has fused with sci-fi to create your strong visual statements about religion, salvation and human agency.
My design process is very organic. My day to day life experiences, my lovers, my encounters — all influence the work. With regards to religion, sex, gay counter-culture, and sci-fi — well, how many times have you heard that story of the young geeky Dungeons and Dragons-playing Filipino immigrant who went to Catholic School and came to the States to realize his goth/angst homosexual dreams in the club and fashion world?
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Emily Baker’s an OG jewelry designer, universe-maker and inspirational mover-shaker we’re lucky enough to call a neighbor and a friend in Portland, Oregon. Her line of jewelry, Sword + Fern — and the shop where it grows as thick as moss — acted as a catalyst for Portland design back in the day. We love watching her world expand — with sweetheart, Lovers synth-programmer and performance artist Kerby Ferris — into a life-giving and electro-sparked atmosphere in a league of its own.
Tonight, Emily takes over room 205 at Ace Hotel Portland for Content 2012, creating a sound installation with Kerby that will blow your fucking mind. Tickets can be picked up at Ace Hotel Portland, and $5 of each goes toward New York Cares to aid in hurricane relief efforts. Below, she gives a glimpse into what’s in store for us and talks about her new F/W collection, Memorizer.
The new jewelry collection, Memorizer, is inspired by the ancient Pacific Northwest First Nations myth of Copper Woman, the First Mother of civilization — her warrior training traditions, wisdom and the power of intuition. I let my senses rule my process; my most beloved way to work is gathering materials by happenstance and sponteneity, messing up and leaving it, then coming back to it again. I found fluidity, the concept of water logic, and the secret world of my own tiny joys came to the surface while I was working on Memorizer.
The alchemic imperfections of hand-cut copper, hand-dyed wood in ombre chakra tones, engraved graphics on leather, silkscreened scarves, cast concrete and cut mirrors all blend together to tell the story of a secret society’s traditions and their visions of women’s ancient wisdom, power and strength, taking the wearer on a joyride to the space alive inside their own personal landscapes.
YOUJOY in room 205 will be a sensory exploration of shape and sound. Kerby’s bandmate Emily has been immersing as of late in Shambhala Buddhist teachings from Pema Chödrön and Chögyam Trungpa — and her current mantra, YOUJOY, emphasizes these principles of finding happiness just by being yourself. Kerby will create an interactive sound installation that will weave in and out of the new Memorizer pieces as well as the new Sword + Fern sculptural line, Water Logic — mobiles, wall hangings, textiles and other jewelry for the home.
![INTERVIEW : JAMES VICTORE
James Victore is a man of action. He believes that learning about free jazz and liquor fermentation and speed-racing can make you a better designer, that graphic design is about experiences and stories and using your hands.
Distilling wisdom from decades down in the beautiful muck of making ideas happen, he’s produced a stunning series of aphoristic posters on the nature of art, design and the creative process. His Aphorisms on Art & Idea Execution is on display in the gallery space at Ace Hotel New York through May 25. The installation is in partnership with the 99U Conference. Jocelyn K. Glei caught up with him recently.
What’s a normal day for you?
I like to think we’re like the army. We get more work done by noon than most people do in a full day. Chris [Victore’s sole co-worker] comes in at 10:30 or 11am. We decide on what needs to be done. We rarely work past 5pm. We’re pretty efficient. We make decisions. I look at the agency system and it’s such a waste. That’s why people like Time Magazine come to us. They know they can give it to us on a Wednesday and it will be done on Friday.
[[MORE]]You mentioned ‘making decisions’ earlier as part of the way you function efficiently. Do you think a lot of people get bogged down by that?
Part of the problem these days is there’s so much choice. At some point, someone just has to say: We’re going to do it like this because I want to do it this way. Because, if you don’t, you’re going to be churning out oatmeal. You look at some graphic design today, and you can tell that nobody is in charge.
You’ve been doing a few little films for the book release. Is that new territory? How did they come about?
The publisher wanted a little flat, static image for the book for the website. We weren’t really feeling that. So this is a great example of how we work. We had five minutes to think about it. So we said let’s get out of here. Let’s go under the Bodhi tree where genius is. So we went around the corner to the Italian restaurant, had a pizza and a bottle of wine, and halfway through we said: “You know what would be really funny? A book with chickens walking around on it.”
So we come back to the studio, and Chris calls Iowa. “Do you have chicks? Yeah, we have chicks. How much are they? $34 for a dozen. Excellent, we’ll take a dozen chicks.” So that’s Thursday afternoon. They say they’ll be hatched by Tuesday, and then they’ll ship them. The next Thursday I get a call from the post office, “You have a perishable package here.” So I’m standing in line, and I hear “cheep cheep, cheep cheep.”
So I called Chris and said, “Chicks are here, we need a tripod, a video camera and some barbeque sauce.” So we shot the thing in the afternoon. I kept them one more day, because I wanted to be with them. And we learned how to feed and care for them. Then Saturday morning we took them to McCarren Park and handed them off to a farmer who will raise them. That’s how we do stuff. We just make it up.
Do you do all of your sketching and writing on paper?
Paper, and not in the studio. I’ll go to a bar or a restaurant. When I did the book, I left the studio every morning and I went to the park and sat for an hour, hour and a half. I brought an idea, and I wrote longhand in one of these big sketchbooks. Then I would come into the studio and work during the day. Afterwards, at 4 or 5, I’d go to my bar, sit with a beer or two, and refine it. Or write on a new idea. So it became this really nice process of every day. And it became a habit. I can’t do the think-work in the studio. The studio’s for putting stuff together — for work-work. And if we’re not doing work-work, then we leave. How many great architecture ideas have been drawn on napkins? Because they’re free, they’re not thinking about work. It’s the work you do before you ever put pen to paper. That’s the important part.
Excerpted from the 99u blog](http://25.media.tumblr.com/a7636ce9283bbcc71a07c6d8dcb118ae/tumblr_mlq0uvgXu21qai3sgo1_500.jpg)
